For a growing number of public and private organizations, telephone-based customer support plays an increasingly vital role in activities requiring direct communication with a caller/customer. In order to serve a maximum number of callers, every call center is designed to optimize call handling efficiency and telephone agent productivity. Some prior art systems allow telephone agents to service a greater number of callers by a) ascertaining a caller's request through collection, by a live agent, of initial information from the caller, and b) transferring the call to a voice response unit to address the specific request of the caller. Other systems reverse the answer and collection process by connecting the caller initially to a voice response unit which collects information that is ultimately used to route the call to an appropriate agent.
While these techniques increase agent productivity, such systems are often limited to business transactions that are rather simple and clearly defined. For moderately complex applications, in which caller requests differ significantly from one caller to the next, semi-automated prior art systems may lead to disconnects, connection to a wrong agent pool, or a sequence of call transfers that may be disconcerting to some callers.
A common device used in telemarketing centers to enhance agent productivity is an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) which allows a call center to cost-effectively handle a large number of calls by placing calls in a holding queue when no agents are available. Before a call is placed in the holding queue, a greeting message identifying the called party is played by the ACD, via an interactive voice response unit (IVRU), to the caller, indicating that the next available agent will service the call. During the holding period, music or advertising messages may be played to the caller to entertain or inform the caller of sales promotions for particular products or services.
Call queuing plays a very important role in call center operations. Known advantages to the call center include increased agent productivity by reduction of idle time for the agent, and increased capacity to handle more calls simultaneously during peak calling periods. Long call queues, however, have several disadvantages. Call centers waste a tremendous amount of money servicing long call queues. Callers waste time while in the queue, resulting in dissatisfaction with the service provided, potentially leading to abandoned calls. Further, for non-800 number calls, the user pays telecommunication charges while waiting.
It is known that many callers to call centers have identical or nearly identical queries but still obtain individual handling by agents. The prior art has attempted to handle such queries by providing pre-recorded answers to commonly asked questions. However, such a facility can provide less than satisfactory customer service, especially when the recorded answer does not precisely match the customer's query.